Author Archives: Aaron Darek

Today We Bring You a Nerd’s Eye View of the Olympics

by Aaron Darek Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of days ago I whined about the annoyingly widespread humanization of Olympic athletes. Enough! We all know that what’s really important about sporting events is statistics, and the more obscure the better. So here are my candidates for nerdiest Olympic coverage so far. First up is Ryan Wallerson’s look at the best athletes of the Sochi games. Not by measuring scores or times or anything normal like that, but by measuring which athlete scored the most standard deviations from the mean in their event. The winner is Poland’s Kamil Stoch in ski jumping:

Next up is a look at which countries have done the best. Not by crudely counting medals or per capita medals or any of that nonsense. This chart looks how countries have done so far compared to how many medals they were predicted to win. The big winner, at 183 percent, is the Netherlands, thanks to their kick-ass performance in speed skating. The most dismal performance so far is from South Korea, at 31 percent. But there are still two days left!

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Here’s Where You’re Most Likely to Die From Air Pollution

by Aaron Darek Posted on September 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic Cities website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Where on earth are you most likely to die early from air pollution? NASA provides the answer with this mortally serious view of the planet, and it is: lots of places.

Like tar stains on a healthy lung, the sickly yellow and brown areas in this visualization represent regions with significant numbers of pollutant-influenced deaths. Heavily urbanized places in eastern China, India, Indonesia, and Europe are stippled by the darkest colors of snuff, meaning they experience rates of ruination as high as 1,000 deaths per square kilometer each year.

In good news, areas painted in blue show where humanity has managed to lower its output of choking smog since the 1850s. These safer havens include spots in the middle of South America and the southeastern United States, where the amount of agricultural burning has decreased since the mid-19th century.

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Here’s Where You’re Most Likely to Die From Air Pollution

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The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

by Aaron Darek Posted on August 27, 2013

The Bullialdhus Crater. It looks little, but it ain’t. Photo: NASA

The Moon was birthed from the Earth—a blob of molten rock sent spiraling off into space in the aftermath of a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago. Years of volcanic activity and bombardment by asteroids beat the Moon into its current form—a dry, desolate land. But, below its battered surface the Moon hides traces of its parentage: deep inside the lunar material, there’s water, says new research.

Water on the Moon may sound strange, but it’s actually been reported and confirmed many times over. Water has been found lining the walls of lunar craters, buried within the lunar surface layers, and in rocks collected by Apollo astronauts. But there is a huge difference between that previously discovered water and the water described in the new study, a project spearheaded by NASA’s Rachel Klima.

Researchers think that the crater water and the soil water arrived after the Moon was formed. Water can be delivered by icy comets or produced through chemical interactions with the solar wind. In the new study, however, the researchers looked at the huge 38 mile-wide Bullialdhus Crater. Scientists think that a giant impact at the center of the crater forced some of the Moon’s subsurface to the top—it’s a window that looks 4 to 6 miles into the Moon’s interior. In these interior lunar rocks the researchers found a spike in hydroxyl, one half of a water molecule, chemically attached to the Moon’s original material—a sign that it’s been there since the Moon was formed.

“I think it would be very tough to have this water be anywhere other than original to the material that formed the moon,” said Klima to ABC.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Water On the Moon Probably Came From Earth
T Minus Three Days Until NASA Sends Two Satellites Crashing Into the Moon

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The Moon Had Water Since the Day It Was Born

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Australian floods lowered worldwide sea levels

by Aaron Darek Posted on August 15, 2013

Australian floods lowered worldwide sea levels

By John Upton

Flood-inducing rainfall in Australia in 2010 was so severe that it lowered worldwide sea levels.

Scientists have been puzzled by satellite data that shows sea levels fell in 2011. A paper published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters attributes a lot of the surprising sea-level decline to antipodean deluges — record-breaking rainfall that was linked to climate change.

Seas have been rising by about 3 millimeters a year in recent decades. But from mid-2010 until 2011 sea levels dropped by 7 millimeters, as shown in this graph:

CU Sea Level Research Group

Australia is home to geological formations similar to lakes — scientists call them arheic and endorheic basins — that do not flow to the ocean. Instead they empty by gradually evaporating. About 40 percent of precipitation in most continents flows into the ocean, but in dish-shaped Australia, that figure is just 6 percent.

Research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research using NASA satellite data found that when these Australian basins brimmed with heavy 2010 rains, they held so much water that they contributed to about half of the fall in global sea levels. The basins held the water well into 2012, some of it as surface water and some as groundwater and soil moisture. (A strong La Niña and heavy precipitation over South America and North America also appear to have contributed to the surprise sudden drop in sea levels.)

Seas have recently been rising more rapidly than the 3-millimeter-per-year average — and scientists say that, in turn, could be linked to recent heat waves and droughts in Australia.

“The recent heatwave and accompanying drought very likely depleted soil moisture and perhaps groundwater, so, yes, there is likely a component that is contributing to the current major positive anomaly in global sea level,” said lead researcher John Fasullo. “This is unlikely to be a major contributor to the long term trend, however, as Australia can only dry out so much.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Federal Gun Agency Gets Its First Permanent Director in Seven Years

by Aaron Darek Posted on August 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Todd Jones to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the agency tasked with enforcing federal gun laws. Jones, an attorney and former Marine, has served as the acting head of the agency since 2011. He becomes its first permanent director since 2006, the year that the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied Congress to require that ATF directors be confirmed by the Senate.

When President Obama nominated Jones to head the ATF in January, politicos expected a gun-lobby showdown. But although the NRA has opposed all ATF nominations since the 2006 rule change and for decades has prevented the agency from fully enforcing gun laws, it unexpectedly announced on Tuesday that it would not take a position on Todd’s confirmation vote. The Newtown, Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association that represents gun manufacturers, announced its support for Jones the same day.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, hailed the vote as a “critical step in the fight to reduce gun crime.” Boston Mayor Tom Menino, the group’s other co-chair, said, “After seven years without a permanent director at the helm, ATF will finally have the strong leadership it needs to stem the flow of illegal guns onto our streets and help keep our communities safe.”

With the vote stalled at 59-40 through Wednesday afternoon, senators waited for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) to arrive at the Capitol en route from her home state to cast the deciding vote needed to overcome a filibuster. Heitkamp, whose return to Washington was delayed because of an illness, was one of only four Democrats to vote against the Senate’s failed gun reform legislation in April. All four voted to break the filibuster against Jones, as did six Republicans: Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John McCain (Ariz.), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).

I emailed Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, to ask how common it is for senators to fly into Washington to cast a deciding vote:

It’s not very common (at all), but neither is it unprecedented. The example that comes to mind is a (roughly) similar situation when the 2009 stimulus vote was held open to give Sherrod Brown time to get back to Washington amidst funeral services for his mother in Ohio.

But other than that recent example, nothing else expressly similar comes to mind. There are older stories of the House GOP leadership holding open the vote on Medicare expansion in 2003 for several hours, and a House Dem open vote some years earlier (involving Rep. Jim Chapman and Speaker Wright). Both of those episodes entailed holding open a vote for the winning side to squeak by (if I’m recalling correctly!).

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Conserve Water this Summer with These Simple Tips

by Aaron Darek Posted on July 28, 2013

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Conserve Water this Summer with These Simple Tips

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How the IRS’s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

by Aaron Darek Posted on May 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

The controversy that erupted in the past week, leading to the ousting of the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, an investigation by the FBI, and congressional hearings that kicked off Friday, comes against a backdrop of dysfunction brewing for years.

More MoJo coverage of the IRS tea party scandal


The IRS Tea Party Scandal, Explained


IG Report Says IRS Has No Idea What Its Own Rules Mean


5 Things You Need to Know in the Inspector General’s IRS Tea Party Scandal Report


Did the Acting IRS Commissioner Mislead Congress?


Word of the Month for May: BOLO


Ex-IRS Director: Tea Party Groups Deserved Scrutiny, But IRS Bungled the Job

Moves launched in the 1990s were designed to streamline the tax agency and make it more efficient. But they had unintended consequences for the IRS’s Exempt Organizations division.

Checks and balances once in place were taken away. Guidance frequently published by the IRS and closely read by tax lawyers and nonprofits disappeared. Even as political activity by social welfare nonprofits exploded in recent election cycles, repeated requests for the IRS to clarify exactly what was permitted for the secretly funded groups were met, at least publicly, with silence.

All this combined to create an isolated office in Cincinnati, plagued by what an inspector general this week described as “insufficient oversight,” of fewer than 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing more than 60,000 nonprofit applications a year.

In the end, this contributed to what everyone from Republican lawmakers to the president says was a major mistake: The decision by the Ohio unit to flag for further review applications from groups with “Tea Party” and similar labels. This started around March 2010, with little pushback from Washington until the end of June 2011.

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Conservative newspaper declares love for Obama’s fracker-friendly ways

by Aaron Darek Posted on May 8, 2013

Conservative newspaper declares love for Obama’s fracker-friendly ways

By John Upton

Twitter user Maimonides,

via The Washington Post

A

Washington Examiner

front page in 2010, after Obama called on blacks, Hispanics, women, and young people to vote.

Uber-conservative Beltway newspaper The Washington Examiner has revealed its secret crush on Barack Obama and his administration’s fracker-friendly ways.

It’s not often that the newspaper says anything nice about the president. The Examiner is owned by Philip Anschutz, an oil-drilling magnate, and the newspaper sometimes seems to exist only to beam its owner’s conservative views into the brains of D.C. insiders.

In March, for example, the paper’s editorial writers likened the president to “a desperate gambler who doubles down on a losing bet” after he called for more green energy spending. In January, the editorial writers charged that “Obamacare threatens states’ fiscal autonomy.” And, famously, back in 2009, Examiner political correspondent Byron York argued that Obama’s “sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are” — as if the opinions of blacks shouldn’t count.

But when it comes to the Obama administration’s complicity in the nationwide fracking spree, the Examiner has nothing but love. Here are some excerpts from “Two cheers for Obama on fracking,” the newspaper’s May 5 editorial:

Two significant pieces of good news last week deserved more attention than they received. First, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that recoverable natural gas resources in the northern Plains states are three times greater than previously thought. Second, President Obama’s newest secretary of the interior, Sally Jewell, said “we must develop our domestic energy resources armed with the best available science, and this unbiased, objective information will help private, nonprofit and government decision makers at all levels make informed decisions about the responsible development of these resources.”

Jewell was referring to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the process by which a pressurized mixture of (mostly) water and chemicals is injected into shale rock formations deep underground. …

More recently, Obama’s pick for Secretary of Energy, MIT scientist Ernest Moniz, has described water and air pollution risks associated with fracking “challenging but manageable” with proper regulation and oversight. …

For all of its claims regarding fracking’s dangers, Big Green’s real concern is that natural gas is becoming so plentiful and cheap that it will undermine the case for more expensive renewable energy. The fact that a succession of federally subsidized green-energy companies has been going bust doesn’t help the critics’ cause.

With Moniz’s nomination, Obama appears willing to at least minimize regulatory obstacles to fracking and thereby reap the rewards of clean, cheap, abundant domestic energy. Good for him. With American economic growth dependent on energy, it’s time to get fracking.

The president appears to have reached so far across the aisle on this one that he has tumbled fully to the other side.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

tweets

, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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Will natural-gas cars start to catch on?

by Aaron Darek Posted on May 4, 2013

Will natural-gas cars start to catch on?

By Claire Thompson

Wikipedia / Mariordo

Honda’s natural-gas-powered Civic.

Could the U.S. boom in natural gas lead to a boom in natural-gas cars? It can cost as little as $1 a gallon to fill them up in the U.S., says Bloomberg Businessweek, and there could be 25 million of them on roads worldwide by 2019.

To provide demand for a swelling supply of natural gas, the rush is on for investors, entrepreneurs, and the auto and energy industries to figure out how to power our transportation fleet with this abundant and relatively cleaner-burning fuel. Bloomberg reports:

Commercial vehicles, which generally rack up two or more times the annual mileage of consumer cars, are going first. In the last year many companies, including GE, UPS, FedEx, AT&T, PepsiCo, and Waste Management, the biggest trash hauler in the U.S., have announced plans to begin or expand conversions of their fleets to natural gas. Cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Fort Worth, Dallas, and San Francisco all have CNG [compressed natural gas] bus fleets. Large fleets of airport shuttles are converting as well.

According to the American Public Transit Association, nearly one-fifth of all transit buses were run by either CNG or LNG [liquefied natural gas] in 2011. Almost 40 percent of the nation’s trash trucks purchased in 2011 were natural gas-powered, the association said. Garret Alpers, founder and CEO of World CNG, a Seattle-based company that converts traditional gasoline cars into dual-fuel vehicles for as little as $8,000, estimates a taxi owner could recoup his expense in a year.

There are around 120,000 natural gas-powered vehicles on U.S. roads today, and over 1,000 natural-gas fueling stations (although only about half of those are open to the public). To encourage the fuel’s expansion from the commercial to the consumer realm, President Obama has advocated for the $7,500 tax credit for hybrids and plug-in vehicles to apply to natural gas-powered ones too, and in January he signed a bill extending a 50-cent-per-gallon tax credit for natural gas used in vehicles.

Brad Plumer says not to expect a natural-gas revolution on our roads anytime soon, though, pointing out that prices for natural gas-powered vehicles and conversions haven’t fallen enough yet:

The vehicles are still far pricier than gasoline-powered cars — or even hybrids. It can take between 13 and 20 years for drivers to recoup those savings in lower fuel costs. What’s more, fueling stations are hard to find.

Case in point: Honda has been selling a Civic that runs on compressed natural gas since 2008. So far, sales have been fairly torpid, with just 1,500 sold last year. Why is that? Well, for one, the price starts at $26,305, or about $8,000 more than a gasoline-powered Civic and $2,000 more than the hybrid version.

Plumer says this could change if oil keeps getting pricier and the technology surrounding natural-gas vehicles — manufacturing, building fueling stations, etc. — keeps getting cheaper. But, he wonders, …

… does it make sense to promote natural-gas vehicles at the expense of other technologies — like hybrids or plug-ins? [An] MIT report suggested that it might just be easier and more efficient to use America’s natural gas to power electric cars rather than set up an entirely new fueling infrastructure. And, so far, the country is nudging along in exactly that direction.

Indeed, Plumer notes, EV charging stations are proliferating much faster than natural-gas fueling stations, so it’s easier to fill up your car with electricity than natural gas. Bonus: EVs can also be charged with solar and wind power, so fracking is not necessarily required.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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5 of the World’s Most Remote Islands

by Aaron Darek Posted on April 21, 2013

Kate S.

on

5 of the World’s Most Remote Islands

5 minutes ago

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